


a place for us

by sonhoedesrazao



Category: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (TV 2016)
Genre: Post s02e04, another heart to heart cause they keep getting interrupted
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-06
Updated: 2017-11-06
Packaged: 2019-01-30 07:02:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12648549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sonhoedesrazao/pseuds/sonhoedesrazao
Summary: Todd sits next to him. His eyes are adjusted to the semidarkness of the room and he can see Dirk’s look of surprise.“You were awake,” he says, not a question.





	a place for us

**Author's Note:**

> Small scene because I can't get enough of their talks, I might add others later in the season. Title is from A place for us, by Fitz and the Tantrums, which is on Max's playlist. Read on [Tumblr](http://sonhoedesrazao.tumblr.com/post/167176764443/ummm-have-brotzly-having-a-night-chat-because-i)!

He’s still high on the adrenaline of discovery—the new clues, the house within a house, seeing Amanda—to fall asleep. He blinks at the ceiling and considers he’ll be dead on his feet tomorrow, but then remembers Dirk did all right despite having spent two hours on a bike the previous night.

That’s when he notices the stillness from the floor. It’s not the quietness of sleep, with its little movements and breathing noises, but total immobility. Dirk is awake. Again.

He hesitates for a second—Hobbs is in the room next door, he can’t just speak up—then gets up and moves towards the pile of blankets on the floor. Dirk startles when he approaches and turns around.

“Todd?”

Todd sits next to him. His eyes are adjusted to the semidarkness of the room and he can see Dirk’s look of surprise.

“You were awake,” he says, not a question.

“I… yes.”

“Please don’t tell me you’re thinking about…  _that_  again.”

Dirk sighs, turning the rest of the way so he’s lying on his back. He answers to the ceiling, hands laying over his chest. “Well, Todd, it is a bit distracting to know you might be leading the people you love to their deaths, so I’m sorry if I’m a little—”

“It’s not your fault,” he cuts in.

Dirk smiles, a sad and un-Dirk-like smile—except now he suspects it’s not so un-Dirk-like after all. That maybe he’s just seeing something that was there the whole time.

“Isn’t it, though?” Dirk asks. “I did climb through your window and forced you to go along with… all this. And now you’re sick and your sister is stranded in a magical faraway land and you and Farah are wanted by the FBI—”

“You didn’t force me.” Dirk gives him a  _look_  and he cedes. “All right, a litte bit. At first. But at some point I went along because I wanted to.”

“And here you are.”

“Yes, exactly.” He sighs, frustrated at himself at not being able to explain it. “Dirk, what was I before I met you?”

“Normal,” Dirk says. “Safe.”

“Miserable,” he adds. “Purposeless. I led a boring life. I'd lost my friends. I'd poisoned the most important relationship in my life with a lie, which I never would’ve come clean about if it wasn’t for you. And now… I believe in something more. I  _am_  something more. Before knowing you, every day felt the same, without any excitement or thrill. I hated myself. I thought I was good for nothing. And I thought I’d always feel that way.” He swallows; sees Dirk mirror the movement. He pushes on. “And now, yes, I’m in more danger than I ever was before and I have pararibulitis but there are times… there are times when I’m proud of myself.”

Dirk’s eyes turn to him. “Why wouldn’t you be?”

Todd ignores the question. All the wrongs he’s committed sometimes feel too much to bear and he’s often thought he’ll never truly atone for it all. But lately he started feeling like maybe he’s on his way there. And he knows when that changed. 

“Dirk,” he says. “I like being with you, despite the danger, despite the risk. I like being who you made me.”

Dirk swallows and blinks before looking to the side. His hands have pulled a corner of his blanket and started picking on a loose thread. This is how he gets when he’s nervous, Todd knows, when he doesn’t quite know how to respond to something, when things get too real and he can’t hide behind a smile or a quip. Todd marvels that they’ve known each other for such a short time yet he can already tell this. If he stopped to think about it, he’d be scared at how fast this happened—how fast the absurd, obnoxious detective he wanted nothing to do with became one of the most important people in his life. He didn’t see it coming in the middle of all the madness, and when Dirk was in Blackwing he could tell himself it was normal to be worried sick for someone he barely knew, considering they were in custody of a shady government agency.

But now Dirk is back and his armor is breaking right before Todd’s eyes, all the optimism and the energy peeling away to reveal the insecurities and fears, and every time Todd sees it—every time he sees  _him_ , as he really is—something flares in him, a protectiveness, a tenderness, he never expected to feel. The only thing that came close was when Amanda got sick, but that had been mixed with guilt and this is… different. 

“Dirk,” he calls after a long silence. “Are you okay?”

“Did you really meant that?”

“Of course.”

Dirk’s mouth opens soundlessly a few times before the words finally come, quiet and brutally honest. “I’ve always wanted to be good for someone.”

There it is again—this urge to comfort, to reassure, that he’s starting to associate with Dirk and that, if he lets himself explore, he’ll find out means something more than he’s ready to deal with at the moment. Yet he can’t help himself from taking the hand that’s pulling on the blanket. Dirk’s breath hitches. He looks at their clasped hands like he’s never seen such a thing before.

“I know you’re scared,” Todd whispers. “I’m scared too, this is all batshit crazy,  _again_ , and we don’t know where it’s going, but what I mean is—we’re a team now. You, me and Farah, even Hobbs and Tina. We all want answers to this. You didn’t create the questions. It’s not your fault that the universe works this way and that it chose you to work around. And you want the answers too, I know you do, I see how excited you get when we find out something new.”

Reluctantly: “Yes. All right. A little bit.”

“We’ll get to the bottom of this and we’ll find Amanda,” he says, infusing the words with confidence because he can’t afford not to have it. "And afterwards,” he adds, and maybe now he’s the one turning his eyes somewhere else—the pattern on the blanket, the corner of the wall ahead—“afterwards, we’re going to open the agency, like you dreamed when you were in Blackwing.  _Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency_..." A smile tinges the words. "There’s nothing I want more.”

He raises his eyes. Dirk is looking at him, and there is so much in that look that it leaves a knot in his throat. Longing for something Todd doesn’t even know if Dirk knows what it is himself,  _friendship-companionship-love._ Hope and desire to believe in Todd’s words at the same time he is haunted by a past Todd is only just beginning to uncover. And, at the same time, skepticism and resignation, as if Dirk knows it won’t be that easy, that there are people after him that won’t let that dream come true.  _They won’t have you again_ , Todd finds himself thinking with desperate resolution.  _No one will take you again._

He more sees the shapes of the words than hears them. "Thank you, Todd.”

“We should sleep,” he says after a beat.

“Right. Big day tomorrow.”

“What are we doing tomorrow?”

“No idea,” Dirk says, “but it’ll be  _unbelievable_.”

They laugh quietly in the dark. He presses Dirk’s hand and feels a press back. If he thought about it, he’d admit he doesn’t want to leave, that this jumble of blankets seems so comfortable and warm that he’d gladly just flop down next to Dirk and let his presence make his point for him— _I’m here, I’m not leaving, I’m here._ But maybe it’s not the time for this, maybe it’s too much. Maybe he needs to figure out his damn feelings first before he burdens Dirk with them.

“Good night, Dirk,” he says, and hopes it is.


End file.
